Orion
by Wynn
Summary: A letter from Faith concerning running and hiding, Spare Slayers, the absurdity of the Big Dipper, and the virtues of a crotch-sniffing dog.


Title: Orion

Author: Wynn

E-mail: effulgent_sun@hotmail.com

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer or __Angel.  They are owned by Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Twentieth Century Fox, UPN, the WB, etc._

AN: This is just a plot bunny that's been bouncing around inside my head for the past few months.  I finally decided to commit it to paper.  Feedback is a wonderful and much appreciated thing.

Orion

By: Wynn

            I spent half my childhood hiding.  In closets, under beds, anywhere I could find that I fit into, a space where I could curl up and close my eyes and wish for another life, a better life, a happy life.  Sometimes I would catch glimpses of the good life on TV.  When I could get to the TV that is.  There was always a mom and a dad and a couple brats that they completely adored.  Maybe a dog.  I wanted a dog a long time ago.  Or a cat.  It didn't much matter to me.  I just wanted something.  Never got it though.  I probably would've killed it anyway.  I kill everything else I touch.  

            The other half of my childhood I spent running.  Out doors, down streets, as far and as fast as my feet could take me away from the fucked up nightmare that was my home, away from the sex and booze and drugs and fights.  Away from me.  I really did think for a while that if I ran far enough I could find myself a new life.  That I would magically stumble across a new family that would take me in with hugs and smiles and a big piece of chocolate cake.  But I never got far.  I'd get hungry and have to go back before I'd starve.  Or someone'd rat me out and I'd get dragged back for the biggest ass whooping ever.  

            I'm not telling you this to get some kind of sympathy.  I don't want your pity.  I don't want anything from you.  Hell, I don't give a fuck whether or not you actually read this letter.  It's not like it was my idea to send it.  It was just another one of those extra special ideas cooked up to 'facilitate my rehabilitation.'  Like writing about how much my life sucked is actually going to make me a better person.  Whatever.  All it'll do is give me a headache, but a murderer's got to do what the California Penitentiary System orders, right?  It's not like I can tell them to fuck off, I got better things to do.  The only things I have to do are to stay alive and stay sane.  

            I can see you quirking an eyebrow at the last one.  Stay sane.  Yeah, right.  Maybe I should've said 'become less crazy,' but that's not positive thinking.  I've been told I need to think more positively about my life.  Like if I think about sunshine and roses and other happy go lucky shit I'll forget about all the people I hurt, all the mistakes I made, the fact that I'll be in an eight by six cell for the next ten to twenty five years.  I guess it could be worse though.  I could be dead.

            You'd probably like that.  You wouldn't say so though.  It wouldn't be proper.  But you think it.  Deep down you do, in that place that's inside us all but you seem to hide better than the rest of us.  You think I didn't see you in the alley holding the big shiny knife?  I did.  I remember you dropped it too.  I don't know why.  For all your supposed education and book learning, sometimes you could be the stupidest son of a bitch on the planet.  After what I'd just put you through I wouldn't have blamed you for doing me in.  But you didn't.  I wonder if that's 'cause you felt compassion or pity or any of those fuzzy wuzzy emotions, or whether you didn't want to try and push Angel out of the way.  He can be a real bastard when you piss him off.  I should know.  I've done it enough.

            Did you ever want a dog when you were a kid?  I don't see you as a dog person.  And I'm not talking about one of those rat chihuahuas or pampered poodles.  They're not real dogs.  They're something obscene that stumbled across a pile of nuclear waste and mutated into the most spastic animals on the planet.  I mean a big, slobbering, tail wagging, crotch sniffing mutt from the pound.  You'd probably cringe your nose at the mud on its paws that it trailed through your spotless kitchen.  

            That _is how you always looked at me.  Like I wasn't fit to lick the bottoms of your pompous British shoes.  I wonder if you always hated me.  If you took one look at me in the good old SunnyD library, saw my leather pants and fuck you attitude, and wrote me off right then and there.  That's all most people need.  One look at my clothes or my tits and they've got their minds all made up.  That I'm trash.  A slut.  Not worth an ounce of their time._

            So I tried to make people make time for me.  Got in their faces and screamed for so loud and so long that they couldn't ignore me.  Only no one heard me. 

            Someone saw me though.  Some higher up looked down on Earth, saw me, and thought, "Let's give _her_ superpowers!  Wouldn't that be neat?!"  I bet they fired his ass.  Seriously, did you ever wonder why I became the Spare Slayer?  I've heard a little about the chick that came before me.  All business.  Raised from birth to be the Slayer.  Sounds like a total bore.  All that training must not have done any good since she died pretty quick.  Maybe in their shock the Powers that Suck Ass went for the complete opposite, from all slay to all play, thinking this one will last longer.  Morons.

            Appearances to the contrary, I never wanted to grow up to be a killer.  I didn't have fantasies of torturing people when I was a tyke.  I wanted to be an astronaut.  Don't laugh.  I did.  I just wanted to escape.  I thought I would get in the fancy space ship and float high above the world, laughing at all the suckers still stuck down on good old planet Earth.  I'd turn around and look at all the stars.  I only knew two constellations though.  Orion and the Big Dipper.  Who the fuck decided it would be a great idea to name a constellation "Dipper"?  I realize that it sort of resembles a dipper.  I'm not that stupid.  But the name still sounds retarded.  I guess it's better than Big Ladle though.  

            But instead of escaping this shit hole of a planet, I got myself locked into a prison cell.  It'll be good for me though, right?  That's what everyone says.  It'll give me time to think about my life and all the stupid shit I've done and work on making me a better person.  Force me to confront all the stuff I've run from or tried to beat into submission.  Does it really matter if I make myself a better person or not?  Everyone will still hate me.  

            I'll probably hate myself more.  Isn't that a trip?  

            Who knows, maybe someday this meditation crap they've prescribed will work its wonders and I'll become that better person and I'll be forgiven for all my sins and I'll be let out.  Start a new life.  Get one of those miraculous second chances.   It would be nice.  To get a place of my own that isn't a seedy motel.  Maybe a dog.  I'd name it Orion.  There's no way in hell I'd call a dog of mine Dipper.  That'd be as stupid as naming a kid Buffy.    

            I've got to jet.  The guard's tapping on the window.  They need the pencil back.  I'd say I hope you're doing well, but you probably wouldn't believe me anyway.  Maybe someday you will.

            _Faith_

*                      *                      *

            "How did she die?"

            The guard looked up at Wesley, surprise flitting across his features before smoothing out to blank indifference.  Turning his gaze back to the forms on the desk in front of him, he said, "Beaten to death by some other prisoners.  She got a rep as the strong one, the one to beat, and they jumped her."  He paused, and his pencil hovered over the pale yellow paper.  "She wouldn't fight back.  Died a few days later in the hospital."  He paused again.  His eyes flickered to Wesley's face as he said, "She said she was tired of running."

            Wesley blinked.  He looked down at the crumpled letter in his hands, finally received a few days ago after weeks of languishing at the post office.  It had been addressed to the old office for Angel Investigations, not the new headquarters at the Hyperion.  

            "Do you… do you know where she's buried?"

            The guard glanced at him again.  He jerked his pencil over his shoulder and said, "Prison cemetery.  Back of the lot."

            "Thank you." 

            Wesley stuffed the letter into his jacket pocket and stepped away from the window.  Moving around the visitor's station, he made his way down the hall towards the back exit.  The letter had remained on his desk for two days before he forced himself to open the envelope and read the smudged pencil scrawl.  He didn't know how long he had sat in his chair, staring at the creased piece of paper, but when Cordelia had walked into his office, asking him some random question about the new case he, Angel, and Gunn were working on, Wesley had grabbed his coat and left the Hyperion without an explanation.

            He didn't know what he would have said to Faith.  He wasn't sure if the words "I forgive you" would have been able to pass his lips.  Maybe it would have been enough to just let her know he didn't hate her, he never really hated her, and that he was sorry things turned out the way they had.  Or maybe he wouldn't have had to say anything at all because she would have just _known _how he felt, how he did believe her when she said she hoped he was alright, but that he wasn't alright.  That he still had nightmares about that night.  That the feeling still hadn't fully returned to his arm.  But how he thought she _could become a better person if she really wanted to, that she already made the first few steps by turning herself in._

            Wesley passed through the double glass doors and crossed the prison parking lot over to the small cemetery.  A rusted iron gate surrounded the neat gravestones and carefully tended grass.  He saw a lump of overturned dirt at the back of the graveyard; a small white headstone peeked over top the mound of earth.  

            He wondered what he was going to say to Angel when he got back to the hotel.  He wondered if he should phone Giles and let him know of Faith's death.  Maybe he already knew.  Another Slayer most likely had been called.  Perhaps the Council had alerted Giles.  Wesley doubted it.  After all, Rupert had been sacked by the Council, too.  They probably weren't too keen to let him get his hands onto another Slayer.

            The lettering on the tombstone was small, precise.  No fancy swirls or decorative flourishes.  There was no touching message or last words of wisdom upon the granite.  Just her name.

            Faith Alexandra Sinclaire.

            Wesley felt a smile tug at the corner of his lips.  Her name was almost as formal and highbrow as his, with an underlying elegance in its mellifluousness.  

            She would told him to fuck off if she knew what he was thinking, and that it was just a goddamn name.    

            He stared at the stone for a few minutes, trying to think of something fitting to say in her remembrance.  He removed the letter from his pocket and glanced down at the wrinkled paper.  He saw her.  He'd always seen her.  Even beneath all the leather and attitude.  He saw her.  

            Wesley carefully folded the letter and slipped it back into his pocket.  He ran his hand across the top of the tombstone, brushing away the few leaves scattered across the rough granite.  His gaze lingered on her name for a few moments before he turned and walked out of the cemetery.

            He wondered how Angel would feel about getting a dog.

*                      *                      *


End file.
